Art critic Robert Nelson received media attention last week when nude photographs of his daughter Olympia (then six, now 11) appeared on the cover of Art Monthly, which was editorialising on the Bill Henson pictures. Nelson and his daughter did a doorstop presser last weekend to speak on the matter. He seemed rational, articulate and informed - but he was wearing a colourful shirt, a bow-tie and talking about nude children. Obviously a weirdo, so enter Andrew Bolt:

We all agree that there is one thing every viewer will instantly notice about Age art critic Robert Nelson in the video below. It is something Nelson clearly hoped would send a message. But the message most viewers in fact would have received in a blink of an eye would be one wholly unfavorable to Nelson and his argument.

Erm, OK, Bolty. Next day, we had this from Bolt: Nelson is exploiting his daughter, he uses the same arguments as pedophiles, there’s a marked difference between his daughter’s pictures and those of Henson because his daughter doesn’t have breasts (what the…??) Overnight, thanks to a Google-happy reader, old Andy had this:

I’ve now found an essay of Nelson’s, predating the controversy, in which he writes about these very pictures and says explicitly they are sexual, and meant to be so. And he explains and lauds them using some of the very arguments used by pedophiles to justify their abuse - that the child was herself excited by her sexuality, eager to explore it, and old enough to consent to what use her elders made of that.

Bolt’s usual modus operandi is to rip decontextualised quotes out of a longer piece, stripping them of their fuller meaning, then glue them back together to create a more misleading and provocative narrative. Lots of axing; plenty of ellipses; a bit of text-shuffling. If you’re skilled you can make Mein Kampf sound like Jane Eyre - or an intelligent and rational essay seem like the rationalisation of … a pedophile?

Below is Nelson’s full article. The text in bold italics was presented by Bolt in his blog:

The sensuality of children is integral to parental fondness. The bond between mother and child is physical; and most of the psychological responses and affections are expressed in a physical way.

In art, however, there are well-grounded taboos against recognizing this essential economy. Centuries of jealous puritanical mores-akin to the suppression of all aspects of childhood-have discouraged the artistic exploration of the sensual delight of children and the enjoyment of their own bodies. Undoubtedly a part of this taboo was the fear of the child’s latent sexuality and its potential for exciting inappropriate and sinful desire. Probably, too, this anxiety was the cause of Lewis Carroll destroying quantities of his photographs of the child Alice Liddell. Carroll may have feared that either the works were-or would be construed as-paedophilic.

In the postwar period of the twentieth century (in which the recognition of child psychology improved and general sexual attitudes were liberalized), fears concerning the free expression of the sensuality of children were compounded by enlightened scruples, legitimate paranoia for the exploitation of children as sex objects.

Yet children know nothing of this and, in spite of parental discouragement, enjoy displaying themselves with theatrical self-consciousness, a sophisticated language of sensual appeal and seductive gestures. For Freud, of course, the child is bristling with sexual impulse, even from babyhood. You could argue that children learn the language of sexual address and narcissism from adults; but no one really knows how deep or superficial their eroticism is. The only source of evidence is children themselves, whose motives in the manifestation of sensual attitude remain inscrutable.

Polixeni Papapetrou’s Play is a suite of photographs taken at the instigation of her two-year old daughter, Olympia. “Mummy, come and photo me”, she would exhort. Frequently this would be a ritual which mother had to perform before an invited adult was scheduled to sit for a portrait. Olympia’s determination to be photographed-and her subsequent satisfaction on seeing the results-set in train a spontaneous exploration of childhood sensuality and a bracing confrontation of the attendant embarrassments.

In the suite of nude photographs, Olympia is seen with a dummy or pacifier. It is a necessary token of her age; otherwise, the spectator could assume that the model is a pre-pubescent Balthusian nymphet. Yet the dummy, itself, is ambiguous; for while it vouches for the child’s infancy (and by implication non-genital sexuality or confinement to an oral phase) it also evokes the perversity of pleasure-sucking, i.e. a sucking for non-nutritious purposes, apparently serving a hedonistic function unrelated to nourishment. Tellingly, then, the outward sign of innocence is potentially the most diabolically sexual.

The works challenge the taboos against the recognition of child sensuality; but they are not a form of erotica. The photographs are stylistically chaste and unromanticized. They document the display in its communicative integrity and invite the instantaneous rush of fondness for the adult-like poses in a tiny child. In the process, however, they do acknowledge that the child has access rights to an erotic language. If the photographs were conceived as erotica, this language would be stylistically induced by the photographer and imposed upon the model. The confronting aspect of this suite is that the sensual language proceeds from the child alone.

Read Nelson’s work entire then read Bolt’s craftily abridged version - they mean and suggest something altogether different. Nelson is advancing the Freudian theory that children are innately physical, sensual and sexually curious - which few parents would legitimately deny - but he is not for a second suggesting that this should be exploited by adults, whether they be artists, advertising agencies or sexual perverts. Delete the rationalisations and explanations, however, and that may not be so clear.

Not that Bolta is suggesting that Nelson is a pedophile himself … oh no, he would never say that. Although he closes the post by linking to the website and writings of this group - because, you know, that’s who Nelson sounds like.

UPDATE

Nelson’s essay, which was here, has now been removed from his wife’s site. Probably unwise in the circumstances; better to have it remain for the few willing to see Bolt’s snippets in their full context. Then again we don’t know what kind of abuse Nelson and Papapetrou might have been copping from Bolt’s own flying monkeys.

The NSW government, copping a flogging for setting up ‘pope police’, says the World Youth Day organisers wanted anti-annoyance laws; the organisers say they wanted no such thing. Australians are richer than ever - but apparently we’re depressed because of it. The cops are called on Ben Fordham, after he takes a break from schmoozing with underworld thugs to chase down a parliamentary thug. A vigilante newspaper in (you guessed it) Queensland may be charged with stalking because it’s hounding a released pedophile. Starbucks will shed 600 stores and 12,000 jobs, as people finally realise their coffee is shit. And having reached his 90th birthday, Nelson Mandela is finally off the US terrorist watch list (obviously at 89 he was still capable of sabotage, assassination and maelstrom).

What a busy news day. The world seems to be going mad … I blame teachers, global warming nutters and Gough Whitlam.